


Tell Me When I Get More Than a Dream of You

by littleboat



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Atsumu will fight a bitch, Big B and that B stands for Bokuto, Fluff, Literary Agent Akaashi, M/M, Miya Osamu Needs a Hug, Miya twins best siblings, Platonic Soulmates, Reading books as a love language, Romantic Soulmates, Slow Burn, past bokuaka - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29904042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboat/pseuds/littleboat
Summary: It takes Osamu a few years to realize that his first memory is not his own.It takes him a few years after that to realize it’s not even a memory, not actually, but a dream. About a boy with dark hair.He wakes up from a dream—Akaashi at a convenience store, with his friends, all of them drunk and laughing around cheap cans of beer—and recalls the way Akaashi’s eyes lit up while biting into a cheap tuna mayo onigiri.or soulmate au where you dream the memories of your soulmate
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Miya Osamu
Comments: 12
Kudos: 114





	Tell Me When I Get More Than a Dream of You

**Author's Note:**

> the inspiration and title for this fic come from jessie ware's [spotlight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw56LGfrf4A), which is the best song ever made. PLEASE go listen to it for spiritual enlightenment

It takes Osamu a few years to realize that his first memory is not his own.

It takes him a few years after that to realize it’s not even a memory, not actually, but a dream. About a boy with dark hair.

He’s at the park, on the swings. Warm, strong hands push at his back, his legs pumping higher and higher, reaching for a bright blue sky. Once he reaches the apex of the arc, he jumps off the swing and lands on his two feet.

He turns around and grins brightly at a man with equally dark hair, an equally bright smile.

The next morning, Osamu tugs on his mom’s skirt and begs her to take him and Atsumu to the park.

~

After the next time it happens, Osamu consults Atsumu. Though they are the same age, a proud seven years old, Atsumu is the older twin.

“I have dreams too,” Atsumu announces. “It’s fine!”

Until a few months later, when Atsumu wakes up screaming, tears streaming down his face.

Their mother bursts into the room, frantic. “What happened?” she demands, sitting on the edge of Atsumu’s bunk.

Osamu crawls down the ladder and slips into bed next to Atsumu.

“The boy I have dreams about,” Atsumu begins, sniffling. “He was getting yelled at today.”

“Oh baby,” his mother sighs, cradling Atsumu to her chest.

That night, Osamu learns the word soulmate. He learns that the dreams he has are memories that belong to another boy, somewhere else in the world.

Osamu falls asleep with Atsumu’s small, clammy hand in his own and hopes that the boy in his dreams never gets yelled at.

~

Over the next few years, he learns a lot of things about him.

First, his name: Akaashi Keiji.

He’s thrilled to learn that his soulmate is Japanese. Some of his friends have soulmates who speak in Arabic, in Russian, in Yoruba. Osamu couldn’t imagine having to travel that far to find his other half.

The second thing he learns is that Akaashi fiddles with his fingers. A lot. Some mornings, Osamu wakes up with his own hands clasped tightly together, a vain attempt to reach out and take Akaashi’s hands in his own, to still his nervous fingers.

The third thing Osamu learns is that Akaashi would probably do a lot better if he cried more. He dreams of the long lists of tasks Akaashi writes out for himself, of the grades he wants to score, all full marks. And then he dreams of the harsh words Akaashi says to himself  
when he can’t meet the unrealistic standards he sets.

But he also learns that Akaashi is funny in a deadpan sort of way. He’s snarky, and doesn’t take any bullshit. His best friend is a kid with a kind smile named Bokuto.

The first year of high school, most of his dreams are of Akaashi tutoring Bokuto. Bokuto is so bad at math it makes Osamu look like he has a PhD in applied mathematics.

When he tells Atsumu about Bokuto, Atsumu holds a hand up and begs him to stop.

“I’m losin’ brain cells just listenin’ to ya,” Atsumu groans. He points to the math problem on Osamu’s page.

Osamu never did understand the unequal distribution of the math gene. Atsumu always gets full marks on their math exams, while Osamu struggles to score in the mid-80’s.

He feels for Bokuto.

Until one day, at the end of Akaashi’s second year, he dreams of Bokuto’s fingers on Akaashi’s face, of Bokuto’s lips against Akaashi’s, of Akaashi’s heart beating so quickly Osamu wakes up feeling it in his own chest.

Osamu hopes that of all the things Akaashi learns about him, this ugly jealousy isn’t one of them.

~

There are apps for this kind of thing. Soulmate matching apps where you can upload information about yourself, about your soulmate, and try to get matched with them.

They’re also a place for people to hook up until they find the person they’re meant to fit best with in the universe.

Osamu never downloads one.

Not because he isn’t anxious to meet Akaashi, and not because he doesn’t want to hook up with anyone.

Because he does. He’s sixteen and desperate to feel someone’s skin against his own.

But he thinks of how he felt, waking up from that dream, when Akaashi had someone else’s hands on him. He thinks of the anger that simmered under the surface, of the fight he got into with Atsumu at the end of it all.

They both had matching black eyes for weeks.

Osamu doesn’t love Akaashi. He doesn’t even know Akaashi. And yet he tiptoes around his life for the feelings of a stranger who doesn’t do the same for him.

~

He wakes up from a dream—Akaashi at a convenience store, with his friends, all of them drunk and laughing around cheap cans of beer—and recalls the way Akaashi’s eyes lit up while biting into a cheap tuna mayo onigiri.

I can do better than that, Osamu thinks. I can do so much better than that.

That morning, and every morning after for the next year, Osamu wakes up, slips on his mother’s apron, and makes batch after batch of rice. He makes hundreds of onigiri that year, to his mother’s dismay and Atsumu’s glee.

Osamu makes so many onigiri that he can shape them with his eye closed. They go from sad and misshapen to perfect triangles. His hands stop feeling like they were made for the contours of a volleyball and start feeling like they were made for this, instead.

So when he reaches the end of his third year and realizes that he doesn’t have a future in sports, he takes a look around him, at the beginnings of the life he’s built for himself, and thinks that maybe there is a future for him in onigiri.

Atsumu punches him in the face for it.

~

Years later, Atsumu is the first person in line for the grand opening of Onigri Miya.

In the time it took Osamu to open up Onigiri Miya, a knee injury forced Atsumu to abandon his dreams of playing volleyball. He goes to college in Tokyo now, and is studying to become a journalist.

Customers flit in and out of the shop. Some of them with Akaashi’s same dark hair. Some of them with the glasses he’s taken to wearing.

Every time Osamu sees someone who looks like he could be Akaashi, his heart lodges in his throat.

But Akaashi never passes through the doors of the shop.

Instead, he goes to college and majors in literature.

“Akaashi got full marks on a paper,” he tells Atsumu.

“Sunarin got a personal best on a run this morning,” Atsumu replies.

“Akaashi stayed up until four in the morning and cried into a bowl of noodles.”

“Sunarin stepped in dog shit.”

“Akaashi graduated from university.”

“Sunarin is going to be on the Men’s National Track Team.”

Both of them have been twenty two years and three months without a soulmate.

Not for the first time—or the second, or the third, or the tenth time—he wonders if Akaashi talks about him like this.

And because Osamu loves nothing more than to rub salt in his own wounds, he wonders if Akaashi has ever considered stopping by.

This is all for him, after all.

~

One night, after the final customer has left and it’s just Atsumu and Osamu left cleaning the shop, Atsumu stops his sweeping to look at Osamu.

“I gotta tell ya somethin’,” he says.

Osamu stops sharpening the knives, takes in his brother. It’s one of the few weekends he’s free and able to visit.

“Yeah?”

“I think you should sit down.”

Osamu does as he’s told, because this severity rarely finds Atsumu.

Atsumu sits down across from him. “I think I bumped into Akaashi last week.”

Osamu’s entire body goes cold. “What?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Atsumu says.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Osamu hisses.

Atsumu puts his hands up. “Because I didn’t know for sure if it was him. He passed by so quickly.”

“Where did you see him?”

“There’s a literary agency,” Atsumu says. “On the floor above the newsroom.”

Osamu grips the table so tightly his knuckles turn white.

He forces himself to breathe. On the inhale, every muscle in his body coils. On the exhale, he deflates. “I didn’t know that,” he whispers.

“Ya can’t know everythin’,” Atsumu says. His eyes are soft, but not pitying. If it was pity, Osamu would’ve punched him by now. “It’s not like we can control what memories we dream.”

“Yer right.” Osamu takes his hat off and runs his fingers through his hair. He sets it on the table. “Makes you wonder what of our memories they’ve seen.”

“Hope Sunarin has seen all the times I’ve stood in front of the mirror shirtless and flexed.”

Osamu snorts. “Yer so weird.”

Atsumu knocks him on the shoulder. “Don’t act like you haven’t done it before too.”

He has, and Atsumu has walked in on him doing it countless times, but he’s not going to admit that out loud.

~

The next Thursday, he calls Kita and asks if he wouldn’t mind managing the shop for a few days.

Kita hadn’t asked for an explanation, had simply agreed, but Osamu explained it to him anyways.

“If you think there’s even the slightest chance that Atsumu’s right, you need to take it,” Kita tells him.

So seven hours later, with Kita’s blessing, Osamu’s pacing back and forth in front of the doors to the building Atsumu is interning at.

For all he knows, Atsumu just imagined things. Just made someone up based on the descriptions Osamu gave him.

“Are you going in?”

Osamu looks up and nearly screams when he sees the person holding the door open.

The man must recognize him too, because his jaw goes slack.

“M-Miya Osamu?”

Osamu is too stupefied to speak. He wants to shake his head to get a hold of himself, wants to nod to answer his question. What he gets instead is some strange jerking of the neck that thankfully gets taken for confirmation.

Something changes in the person’s eyes. It’s slight, but it’s enough to give Osamu hope.

“Akaashi Keiji?” he whispers. He can’t muster more than that.

Akaashi nods, the motion much more fluid.

He’s still taking Akaashi in—his smooth skin, the curve of his cupid’s bow, the cut of his cheekbones—when Akaashi drops the door handle and bolts.

As soon as Osamu’s found him, Akaashi is running away, through the doors, past the check-in desk.

Osamu watches until Akaashi disappears around a corner.

~

He forces himself not to cry. Except Atsumu comes down during his lunch break and finds Osamu, still sitting on the curb outside the office building, and sits down next to him.

“What happened?”

Osamu takes one look at the concern in his brother’s face and starts sobbing like he did when they were kids.

“It was him,” Osamu wails.

Atsumu wraps an arm around his shoulder and tucks Osamu’s head to his chest, lets him cry and cry.

“I’ll leave a bag of dog shit under his desk,” Atsumu threatens, when Osamu is sniffling and wiping away tears.

Osamu snorts and Atsumu keeps making more and more absurd threats until Osamu is laughing again.

~

That night, he dreams of the shock, the wonder, the hope on his own face through Akaashi’s eyes.

He wakes up in tears again.

“Forget the dog,” Atsumu says, beating all his frustration into the eggs he’s whisking. “I’ll just take a shit directly on his desk.”

Osamu’s laugh is watery, and when his eyes meet Atsumu’s, he finds that Atsumu is crying too.

“Yer gettin’ yer tears in the eggs,” Osamu gripes.

“It’s just extra seasonin’,” Atsumu says, not bothering to wipe them.

~

Atsumu takes him to work, introduces him to his coworkers. There’s Sakusa Kiyoomi, whose face is in a perpetual frown, but whose eyes tell a different story. They flit through so many emotions, constantly taking in the people around him. Osamu is fascinated by the way the two moles on his forehead move with his eyebrows.

There’s Hinata Shoyo, who’s bright, excited, and competitive. Between Hinata and Atsumu, they haven’t missed a single deadline in nearly two months. Hinata met his soulmate when he was in middle school.

“But we hated each other for years,” Hinata says breezily. “It took us forever to finally see the good in each other. And even longer than that to finally fall in love.”

That eases some of the pain in Osamu’s battered heart.

He’s introduced to Inunaki Shion, who’s quick on his feet, quicker with his mind, and is able to save every story before it becomes something bound for the trashcan. Inunaki teases Atsumu every chance he gets, and that sits right with Osamu.

Atsumu’s co-workers spend all day marveling at the novelty of Atsumu’s twin brother. Osamu hasn’t been a novelty in a long time. The attention is nice.

At the end of the day, they file into the elevator. The doors are sliding shut when someone calls, “Hold the door please!”

Osamu sticks his foot out, and immediately regrets it when he gets a good look at the person who has just joined them.

Akaashi’s eyes meet his, then cut to Atsumu. Osamu follows his gaze and sees that Atsumu has gone red in the face.

“‘Tsumu, it’s alright.”

He says it to be placating, but Osamu doesn’t know if it’s alright or not. All he knows is that the rejection hurts.

The elevator comes to a stop and right as he’s about to file out, Akaashi’s hand catches his sleeve.

“Miya-san?”

Osamu doesn’t look at Akaashi when he answers. “Yeah?”

“Can I talk to you please?” Akaashi pronounces each word like his ribs are stabbing into his lungs.

“No, you can’t talk to him,” Atsumu says, grabbing Osamu’s other arm.

“Go ahead, ‘Tsumu.”

“No,” Atsumu grits out.

“Atsumu.”

Atsumu sighs and drops Osamu’s sleeve. He glares at Akaashi before he huffs out of the elevator.

Akaashi hits the button for the thirtieth floor and the elevator rises again.

“So?” Osamu asks.

Akaashi is silent. Osamu watches the numbers change. Fourth floor, fifth floor.

Akaashi doesn’t say anything until they reach the eighth floor.

“I’m sorry. For yesterday.”

“I am too.”

“No,” Akaashi says, too quick, too sharp. “I’m sorry for running. For not hearing you out. I—” He falters, takes a moment to collect himself, and finally, finally looks Osamu in the eyes.

“I appreciate you coming to find me.”

Understanding crashes into Osamu like a train. “You weren’t ever going to do it, were you?”

Akaashi’s gaze drops back to the floor. He shakes his head imperceptibly.

“Why not?”

“I’m not ready to talk about it.”

Osamu hears the way Akaashi’s voice catches and he doesn’t push him.

“You don’t have to.”

When they reach the first floor again, Osamu gives Akaashi his number and doesn’t hope for much.

That night, he dreams of the heartbreak that hitched a ride on his face from floors eight till thirty and down again.

~

He wakes up to a text that says:

Sorry I made you cry.

Then:

Please ask Atsumu-san not to shit on my desk.

And then, hours later:

Dinner?

Osamu wonders if he’s going to dream of Akaashi’s fingers hovering over the keyboard, deliberating on whether or not to hit send.

Atsumu vehemently opposes Osamu going anywhere near Akaashi.

But Osamu has spent too many years waiting for this moment. He doesn’t care if he’s ignoring red flags, or setting himself up for the worst heartbreak of his life.

He replies:

yes

~

Dinner is awkward and stilted.

They hardly say much of anything, besides exchanging the basic pleasantries.

Osamu’s brain is screaming at him to abort mission, to find some stupid excuse to beg off, to have Atsumu call him and pretend to have lost a limb in a freak printer accident, anything.

Akaashi pushes his plate away, barely touched, and Osamu follows suit.

“I don’t want to lie to you, Miya-san—” Akaashi begins.

“Osamu,” he interjects.

“Miya-san,” Akaashi continues. “But you’re right. I wasn’t going to try to find you.”

Osamu tries to swallow the lump in his throat, tries to blink back the burning in his eyes. Hasn’t he cried enough these past few days?

“Why weren’t you gonna try to find me?” He hates how desperate he sounds, but he needs to know.

Akaashi sidesteps his question completely. “What if I can’t love you the way you’re meant to be loved?”

Osamu makes a decision then and there and briefly wonders if he’ll spend the rest of his life regretting it. He pushes the thought away and trudges forward.

“Says who soulmates have to be romantic? Says who you can’t love me as a friend? Says who that kind of love isn’t enough?”

Akaashi’s eyes go wide and his mouth hangs open. Then his face crumples, and for the first time that Osamu can remember, Akaashi begins to cry.

After what feels like hours, but is probably only minutes, Akaashi says, “I was in love with someone else.”

“Was it Bokuto?”

Akaashi inhales sharply, eyes cutting up to meet Osamu’s.

“I was devastated, after I met him, that he wasn’t the person I was seeing in my dreams.”

Akaashi whispers the words, as if the volume with which he speaks them will somehow soften the blow.

“I’m an idiot for not putting that together,” Osamu says. “I know that you went to all of his volleyball matches and that you tutored him in math. I know he was your first kiss.”

Akaashi doesn’t respond for a while. Then he says, “What else do you know about me? What things do you know that have nothing to do with Bokuto-san.”

Something like hope flickers in Osamu’s chest.

“I know you’re a bad singer,” he says, thrilling at the way Akaashi goes pink. “I know which sweater you wore every time you had to write a paper in college. I know you started wearing glasses when you were nineteen. I know that you like to go on runs when you’re upset.”

“I wore that sweater because it was itchy,” Akaashi says. “The faster I could write the essay, the faster I could get it off.”

Osamu snorts, but before he can say anything, Akaashi continues.

“I know things about you too. I know about the time you broke your arm and carried around a pack of multi-colored markers so girls could sign your cast.”

“I know your mother’s birthday,” he says. “And which bakery you buy her cake from every year. I know about the time you accidentally gave Atsumu a bloody nose, and told him to punch you in the arm to make up for it.

“I know that he hugged you instead, and got blood all over your shirt. You cried the minute he wrapped his arms around you.”

Osamu’s cheeks go hot. “I was so mad at myself for hurting him.”

“You two fight a lot though.”

“Fighting where we both get hurt and hurting him are two different things.”

Akaashi hums. “I guess for all the things we know about each other, there are still a lot of things we don’t know.”

“Lemme fill in the gaps for you,” Osamu begs.

And to his surprise, Akaashi holds his hand out. “I’d like that.”

Osamu reaches his hand out slowly, giving Akaashi ample opportunity to pull away, to change his mind.

He brushes tentative fingers against Akaashi’s and they both gasp. Osamu takes way Akaashi’s hand in his own and marvels at how right he finally feels.

~

The first gap he fills is that Akaashi doesn’t run away from things once he’s set his mind to them.

Osamu asks him to get breakfast before he has to head back to Hyogo, and Akaashi agrees.

“What you said yesterday, Miya-san—”

“Osamu,” he says again and wonders how many times he’s going to have to correct him.

Akaashi pauses for a moment, smiles at the cup of coffee in his hands, and trudges forward.

“It really helped.”

“What’d I say?” Osamu asks, stabbing at the plate of pancakes in front of him. Akaashi invited him to an American style breakfast spot.

“That loving someone doesn’t have to be romantic.”

Osamu sits up straighter. “It doesn’t. There are a million ways to love somebody.”

“Tell me about the people you love.”

Osamu tells him about Atsumu, who also doubles as his best friend, about Aran, who he’s looked up to since they first met, about Kita, who is kind and dependable and takes care of the people Osamu loves when they can’t take care of themselves.

“What about you?” Osamu asks.

“Well, you already know Bokuto-san,” Akaashi says.

“But I don’t,” Osamu says, shaking his head. “I mean, not really.”

So Akaashi tells him about how long it takes Bokuto to style his hair in the morning, about the running list of Bokuto’s moods and how to pull him out of them that Akaashi keeps in his mind, about how Akaashi didn’t really like himself until he met Bokuto.

“He sounds like a great guy,” Osamu says, and means it.

“One day I’ll introduce you,” Akaashi says, and then immediately stills and slaps a hand over his mouth.

Osamu smiles, small and hopeful. “I’d like that.”

~

Two weekends later, Osamu learns what Akaashi looks like when he’s impressed.

He convinces him to visit Onigiri Miya, and dreams of Akaashi purchasing his train ticket and packing an overnight bag.

They’re still hardly acquaintances, so Osamu recommends a hotel for Akaashi to stay at.

He invites him to the shop for dinner and Akaashi’s eyes go wide when he takes in the interior.

“You own this?” he asks, sitting on one of the stools near the counter.

Osamu can’t keep the grin off his face.

It only grows wider when he pushes a plate of onigiri at Akaashi, and watches his eyes slip shut as he takes the first bite. When he opens them again, he smiles so brightly Osamu thinks he won’t have to pay the light bill for the next month.

~

To Osamu’s surprise, it’s Akaashi who texts him first this time.

One of the authors I work with is doing a book reading. Want to come?

Osamu hasn’t picked up a book that wasn’t a cookbook since the required reading he was forced to do in high school, but he isn’t about to tell Akaashi that.

sure, i’d love to, send me the details

That’s how he ends up in a room full of people of all ages sitting patiently, listening to the author read an excerpt of their book.

Most of them have a copy in hand and are following along. Osamu feels silly, sitting there empty-handed, until an older woman holds her book out to him. She points to the spot on the page where the author is, and Osamu reads along with her.

When it’s time for the question and answer portion, there’s an issue with the moderator and Akaashi steps in to fill the position.

His voice is smooth and carries over the audience with practiced ease. The woman next to Osamu pays closer attention to Akaashi than she does the author, and Osamu gets it, he does, because he finds himself doing the same.

“You were great up there,” he says, when they’re walking to dinner that night.

Akaashi laughs, small and embarrassed. “You think so? I was so nervous.”

“I couldn’t tell,” Osamu says. “You were a natural. Led the conversation like a real professional.”

He flushes at the praise, but the smile doesn’t leave his face the entire night.

~

Letting Akaashi meet Atsumu is like letting Akaashi walk through a minefield. Prepping him to meet Atsumu requires more honesty than Osamu is prepared for.

Explaining to Akaashi why exactly it is that Atsumu wants to rip his guts out of his body and use them as decor around his apartment (“His words, not mine,” Osamu clarifies.) leaves him feeling raw and choked up.

But all Akaashi says is, “I don’t blame him for wanting to shit on my desk.”

That pulls a laugh out of Osamu and eases the pain in his chest.

Dinner with Atsumu goes better than expected, and both Miya twins leave the evening more than a little charmed by Akaashi Keiji.

~

When he meets Bokuto Koutarou, Osamu understands what Akaashi means.

Bokuto is bright and funny and passionate and competitive. He’s still horrible at math and he goes red in the face when Osamu brings it up.

“I used to play volleyball in high school,” Osamu tells him.

“You should come to a game sometime, Myaa-sam,” Bokuto says. “I always send Akaashi a ticket. I can send one for you too.”

Attending Bokuto’s volleyball matches becomes the first routine between them. And eventually, when he warms up to the idea, they bring Atsumu too.

Atsumu and Bokuto don’t get along at first, but when they finally click, it’s a match made by the devil himself.

~

He’s introduced to Akaashi’s litany of plants, to the rows of bookshelves that line the walls of his apartment.

“I’ve never been much of a reader,” Osamu tells him, finally fessing up.

“We can change that,” Akaashi says.

His mind catches on the fact that they make plans as a we now, that there are upcoming things in their future for him to look forward to.

He cradles Akaashi’s copy of Kitchen like it’s something precious and begins reading it that night.

Every time they meet up, Osamu swaps the book he’s finished for the next book Akaashi recommends to him.

They spend weekends eating onigiri, catching up, and talking through books.

Osamu doesn’t expect it, but Akaashi makes a reader out of him.

~

“You’re my best friend,” Akaashi says to him, nearly two years after their first dinner.

They’re sitting at a park near the elementary school Osamu attended, feeding the ducks.

It’s one of the last warm days of the year, just before the heat of summer slips away and the chill of fall truly sets in.

“I can’t believe I almost didn’t find you,” Akaashi says, staring down at his hands. He shakes his head, and looks up, finding Osamu’s eyes. “I can’t imagine my life without you.”

They’ve made so many memories, shared so many secrets, learned each other’s ins and outs in a way Osamu never has with anyone else before.

Akaashi has taught him patience, kindness, how to be gentle yet firm. He’s never once been afraid to call Osamu on his shit. He’s never once extended anything other than genuine understanding.

I love you, is what Osamu wants to say.

His mouth feels like a graveyard, like a place where words go to die. Each tooth feels tombstone heavy with the weight of the emotion closing his throat.

“I can’t imagine my life without you either,” is what he finally manages.

~

A year after that, Akaashi is the first person in line when Osamu opens the Tokyo branch of Onigiri Miya.

Osamu and Atsumu don’t fight nearly as much now as they did when they were kids, but Atsumu still punches him in the shoulder for giving Akaashi first in line privileges.

He makes it up to Atsumu giving him the first onigiri.

On their walk to the train station that night, Akaashi hands him a gift bag. “Congratulations, Myaa-sam.”

“Osamu,” he corrects.

“Congratulations, Osamu.”

Their fingers brush against each other, and Akaashi doesn’t pull away.

He’s learned to push down the romantic parts of the love he has for Akaashi. He’d never let something as silly as his feelings get in the way of the most important relationship in his life.

Osamu made a promise, all those years, and he doesn’t intend to break it. But even he can’t stop the way his treacherous heart pounds against his ribs at the touch.

~

More often than not, Osamu dreams of himself.

Sometimes, he dreams of the manuscripts that Akaashi spends his days reading, sometimes, of the weekly dinners Akaashi has with his parents.

Once, he dreams of Akaashi hanging out with Kozume Kenma, and when he wakes up, Osamu texts him and asks Akaashi to introduce them.

But usually, the dreams are of himself. Lifting his hat off his head to push his bangs out of his face. Or smiling idly at something he’s reading on his phone. Or mumbling to himself while trying to fill a large order. Or the look on his face when he’s giving his opinion on something in a book they’ve both read, altogether too serious and too excited.

He dreams about mundane things, about the types of things Osamu doesn’t think he’d notice about himself.

It takes him too long to understand what it is he’s seeing.

It doesn’t click until one day, when they’re having tea on the floor of Akaashi’s apartment. It’s a different apartment, but it’s filled with the same plants. The number of books lining the walls has only grown in size.

Akaashi puts his cup down and the sound of glass rattling against glass breaks through the quiet of the midmorning.

“Keiji?” he asks, quirking a brow.

Akaashi doesn’t respond. He just pushes away from his spot on the ground and moves so he’s sitting next to Osamu.

Osamu puts his own cup down and turns towards him.

“Is somethin’ the matter?”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Akaashi says. He shakes his head. “Well, that’s not totally true.”

“Yer scarin’ me, Keiji.”

Akaashi stares at Osamu for a moment, searching his face for something. For what, Osamu doesn’t know.

“Osamu,” he says. “Do you love me?”

He inhales sharply. “‘Course I do, Keiji. Yer my best friend and besides ‘Tsumu, I don’t think there’s a person in the world who knows me better than you do.”

Akaashi nods. “I agree. With all of that.”

“I feel like yer about to tell me yer pregnant, or yer givin’ away all of yer worldly possessions to live on a boat in the middle of the sea or somethin’.” He laughs, but it’s awkward and stilted, and he regrets his attempt at levity as soon as it claws its way out of his throat.

“Would you be willing to add another kind of love to that list?”

Osamu’s breath leaves him in a gasp.

“I know that’s asking for a lot, especially when I’m the one who said I didn’t want anything romantic but—”

“Yes,” Osamu rasps. “God, yes.”

Akaashi’s eyes go wide, but his brain is working much faster than Osamu’s, because he takes Osamu’s face in gentle hands and leans in slow enough that Osamu could pull away.

He closes his eyes and meets Akaashi halfway.

Osamu shivers when warm, tentative lips brush against his own.

He fists his hands in the fabric of his pants, in a valiant attempt to not reach out and kiss Akaashi for all he’s worth.

But again, Akaashi’s brain is working faster, because he pries Osamu’s hands loose and brings them to his own face.

Osamu feels tears spring to his eyes when he can finally touch Akaashi the way he’s wanted to so desperately for all these years.

He runs his hands through Akaashi’s hair, until his fingers knock against the frame of Akaashi’s glasses. Osamu pulls away for the few seconds it takes to pull Akaashi’s glasses off, fold them up, and place them on the kotatsu.

Akaashi swipes his tongue across Osamu’s bottom lip and he opens his mouth. Akaashi takes his time learning the taste of Osamu’s tongue, the curve of his neck, the dip of his collarbone. There is nothing greedy about the kiss. Just thorough consumption.

~

That night, Osamu dreams of himself in Akaashi’s arms.

He wakes up with Akaashi in his.

**Author's Note:**

> pls warp whatever details you need to to make this au work. i know i acknowledged the fact that there are soulmate matching apps, but pls pretend like social media doesn’t exist and Osamu couldn’t have just slid into Akaashi’s dms and saved them all the grief lol
> 
> thank you to [stefansgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stefansgirl) and [laur](https://twitter.com/oatmvlks) for beta reading : >
> 
> come say hi on [twt](https://twitter.com/littleboatau)!


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